Aerodynamic design of a highly loaded supersonic aspirated axial flow compressor stage

Abstract

A non-standard aerodynamic design idea has been proposed for the supersonic or the transonic axial flow compressors. The aim of this non-standard design idea is to further increase the stage load efficiently with boundary layer suction used only in the stator, which can reduce the design difficulty of the air bleed system in the rotating part and improve the reliability of the stage. Compared with the conventional supersonic shock-in-type rotor, the rotor designed by this method can further increase the turning of the flow to enhance the stage work. Compared with the traditional supersonic impulse rotor, it can lower the rotor exit absolute Mach number to relieve the design difficulty of the downstream stator. But by increasing the turning of the flow in the rotor, the stator entrance Mach number will be increased inevitably, so boundary layer suction is used to solve its internal flow problems. Based on the numerical simulation, a verification stage has been designed to demonstrate the feasibility of this non-standard aerodynamic idea. From the three-dimensional viscous numerical results, a stage with total pressure ratio 2.56 has been attained at tip tangential speed 370 m/s. For this aspirated stage, three kinds of efficiency evaluation methods are applied, and the corresponding stage maximum efficiency is around 91% (calculated by formula (5)), 87% (calculated by formula (6)), and 83.4% (calculated by formula (7)) separately. The total bleed mass flow rate in the stator is around 5.8% of the inlet.